This is one Mean Old Lady!

Self-portrait: 'Quilter on Fire'

Friday, June 4, 2010

'A Storm Hits the Garden'

Quilt guilds often issue 'challenges' to members. In this case, each of us paid for a brown bag that contained a fat quarter* of the green grass fabric. I paper-pieced 'storm at sea' blocks using tiny floral prints and the challenge fabric. This piece is about 14" square. I nearly lost my tiny little mind doing the paper piecing, which requires one to work kind of upside-down and backwards. (This was a gift to my sister, who has always wanted a 'Storm at Sea' quilt.) I would not call this an entirely successful piece, because there are places where there is not enough contrast, obscuring the pattern. Up close, though, it's interesting to look at. A lot of quilters love, love, love paper piecing. I admit it's almost the only way to achieve precision with a miniature, but OH, the pain!* A 'fat quarter,' or FQ, is quilting lingo for a quarter yard cut as an 18" x 22" piece. This is achieved by cutting a half-yard piece in two. Sometimes novices make the mistake of buying a quarter-yard of fabric and then find that a 9" length is not very useful. Guess how I know this.

4 comments:

Our local Arboretum has a special flower bed where they cultivate plants according to their color so that they will match up with a particular quilting pattern. They change the plants and patterns in spring, summer and fall. With your love of gardening and quilting, that sounds like something you might enjoy...or not.

I've seen these in a couple of locations! So pretty and such fun! In Kentucky, there is a 'quilt block on a barn' initiative, so it's fun to see those pop up unexpectedly. It would be hard to do a block garden here....the way things do grow! but I admire them when I see them. (Gail, where do you reside? Indiana?)

I like the way the contrast level varies in this quilt. When a repeated pattern fades in and out in a quilt, it can make the design more interesting. That's my personal taste, of course. I also like the way the blue moves across the quilt diagonally. It's hard to believe this is only 14" square. It's a gem.